Oxfam welcomes Labour's call for global target to reduce inequality

Oxfam today welcomed a speech by Ivan Lewis, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development calling for global targets to reduce inequality and action to protect scarce planetary resources.

Phil Bloomer, Oxfam Campaigns and Policy Director, said: "We are delighted that Ivan Lewis today backed Oxfam's call for world leaders to agree global targets to reduce inequality. In a world of scarce resources the price of one man's extreme wealth is too often another's abject poverty.

"World leaders need to urgently reform a global economy which allows the richest 100 people to increase their wealth by $240 billion in a single year while 1.3bn people live on less than $1.25-a-day."

Notes to editors:

Oxfam last week published a paper which revealed that the net income of the world's richest 100 people during 2012 would have been enough to end extreme poverty four times over. http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/the-cost-of-inequality-how-wealth-and-income-extremes-hurt-us-all-266321